The tension that had been stretched across Jose's face finally loosened, blooming open like a chrysanthemum as his usual arrogance returned.
In his eyes, Shane now looked like a fly caught in a spiderweb, struggling helplessly as endless ghost soldiers sward him from all sides.
"Heh…"
A low chuckle suddenly pierced through the noise of the battlefield.
It was Shane.
Looking down at the man who thought he had everything under control, he simply couldn't hold back his laughter.
"So you made a snap judgnt without investigating anything, based only on intuition and your own assumptions…"
Hovering in midair, Shane showed no fear at all. Instead, there was a trace of infuriating pity in his eyes.
"Guild Master Jose, have you been sitting up high for so long that you've forgotten the most basic principle of magical research—verification?"
The smile on Jose's face froze.
That gaze, looking down on him like he was so joke on display, instantly dragged his recovering mood right back into the gutter.
"What are you laughing at? What's so funny?" he asked, narrowing his eyes as his killing intent surged.
With decades of experience, Jose certainly understood that this world did contain anomalies—people born knowing things others had to struggle to learn, prodigies whose magic was fundantally different from everyone else's.
But so what?
The depths of magic were not sothing talent alone could bridge.
Every one of the so-called Wizard Saints now standing at the top of the continent was a monster of astonishing brilliance.
But even monsters needed long years of piling up experience and tempering themselves to build a towering path of magic.
For this brat, at his age, to already be using absurd speed and physical skill to contend with a Wizard Saint was a miracle in itself.
But to also possess magical mastery deep enough to stand on equal footing with him?
Don't be ridiculous.
Human effort had limits. Ti was the one truly fair law.
This little brat had outrageous magical power but no idea how to use it. That was the only reality Jose would accept.
He did not believe—would never believe—that sothing so unreasonable could exist.
…
This ti, though, Shane didn't answer. He only smiled in silence.
Since the man was being so "helpful," standing there like a perfect target and thoughtfully wrapping himself in a turtle shell, it would've been rude not to respond properly.
"All right then. With the grandest courtesy possible…"
Shane drew a slow breath, the magic inside him reversing course as the [Dragon Reactor Core] in his chest began to rumble.
"I'll return your kindness with the legend of a Heroic Spirit's life itself!"
The instant his words fell, Jose's eyes sharpened. He seized on the brief pause.
The black ghost tide below roared upward like a tsunami, engulfing Shane's figure in pitch-black darkness in the blink of an eye.
For a mont, it seed the world was made of nothing but wailing ghosts.
And yet, looking at the result that should have satisfied him, Jose found he couldn't smile.
"Sothing's wrong…"
Even with his view blocked by the black tide, even with his senses filled by the presence of his own ghost soldiers, he could still feel it—
the brat up in the sky, swallowed by darkness… his presence had changed.
It was not the despair of soone about to die.
It was the awakening of sothing higher, sothing that made the body shudder.
The instincts of a Wizard Saint scread a warning in Jose's mind.
Move!
He shouted it at himself internally.
But he couldn't.
The pride and reputation of being "one of the strong" rooted his feet to the floor.
Only seconds ago, he had boasted that Shane could co at him whenever he wanted. He had openly mocked the brat for being unable to touch him.
If he started dodging now, before being struck at all, then in front of all the guild masters of Fiore, he'd be slapping his own face.
Impossible… I'm a Wizard Saint! How could I be scared off by so little brat?!
In that instant of ntal warfare, the feeling of danger reached its peak.
"Damn it! Forget it!"
His survival instinct finally overpowered his pride, and Jose grit his teeth, about to shift position.
Too late.
The mont magic gathered under his feet, a gaze pierced through the dense black tide of ghost soldiers and fixed on him.
Jose instinctively looked up.
A slit suddenly opened in the black flood above.
Within it, Shane was looking down at him.
The human warmth in those once calm, black eyes was rapidly fading, replaced by the cold golden gaze unique to sothing inhuman.
Then, in a flat, echoing voice that fell from the sky like judgnt, he said:
"I won't hold back…"
"I'll give you a lesson… you'll rember for the rest of your life."
The words were far too familiar. They were the exact sa lines Jose had thrown at Shane just minutes earlier.
"You think you can win?!"
Sha and fury exploded together. Jose roared toward the sky.
"Don't get ahead of yourself!!"
"Dark Pulse!!!"
He thrust both hands forward. The two giant ghosts surrounding him fused into a massive dark spiral several ters wide, roaring upward with enough force to shatter anything in its path.
Faced with that devastating strike, the boy in the sky didn't dodge at all.
He only slowly raised the twin spears in his hands, their tips pointing downward, and closed his eyes.
In his mind, countless details from the mont Lancer had pierced through Deliora flashed past.
He heard a sound.
Not wind.
Not ghostly screams.
But water—lake water—and sowhere beneath it, the distant sorrowful cry of a dragon.
That was Lancelot's essence. The "purity" that the silver-haired knight could never completely erase, no matter how much darkness covered her.
His dragon furnace core pounded madly, compressing and converting that violent magic by force before pouring it, without reservation, into the weapon in his hands.
"Vmm!"
Shane brought the twin spears together. The air suddenly grew damp and heavy.
At this mont, all of his magic was gathered into the conceptual holy sword of the lake—
Arondight.
For the first ti, that enormous invisible power took on a clear texture.
It was not blinding lightning, nor violent fla.
It was a gentle, clear lake-blue glow.
"So this is the stainless lake-light…"
Feeling the brilliance gathering at the tip of the weapon, Shane shook his head lightly.
"What a cruel irony…"
He rembered the first vision he had witnessed—
Lancer's true form, and that horrifying scene of clear lake water slowly blackening beneath a mass of rotting flesh.
Even recalling it now made his chest tighten, as if cold lake water were crushing all the air from his lungs.
"Not exactly a pleasant mory…"
"If that's the case…"
Shane abruptly opened his eyes, those cold golden irises reflecting Jose below.
"Then you can have a look too. Let take you down into those deep, freezing waters…"
And calmly, he spoke the release chant that unveiled the Noble Phantasm's true na:
"True Na, pseudo-deploynt."
"The clear and serene lake's surface reflects the moonlight!"
As the words rang out, moonlight descended and shone upon the spears.
The dragon wings behind Shane shuddered once. Instead of dropping, he shot even higher, piercing straight into the clouds.
The instant he reached the apex, he reversed course.
"Now Sink—"
"Now Unknown, Innocent Light of the Lake!"
The boy beca a streak of blue aurora, plunging downward.
At that mont, vision narrowed, and sound vanished. His speed had already surpassed the limits of sound itself.
The air in front of his spear tips was compressed into burning plasma, but before it could touch his body, it was repelled by that "stainless" blue magic.
"What… what is that light?!"
Jose scread in disbelief from below.
The Dark Pulse he had been so proud of could not even stall it for an instant. It was torn apart and vaporized like thin paper by the descending blue aurora.
This was power from an entirely different dinsion.
"ARONDIGHT!!!"
The mont the final na was spoken, the blue light pierced heaven and earth.
Makarov, the gathered guild masters—everyone froze.
All that remained in their eyes was that pillar of deep azure light.
It fell in a perfect line, pinning itself into the earth like a divine stake.
"BOOM—"
There was no gigantic explosion, no firestorm, no spray of shattered stone.
Only one short, heavy impact so dense it made the earth cry out.
The ground rippled like water struck by a massive boulder. Magic spread outward in visible blue waves, beautiful and deadly.
Wherever the blue light passed, Jose's ghost soldiers, the hard stone floor, the tables and chairs—everything—was instantly flattened into its most primitive state: sand and rubble.
It was destruction reduced to its purest, cleanest form.
A few seconds later, the light faded.
The grand hall was gone.
At the center of the forest, only a massive, perfectly smooth circular crater remained, like a seal pressed into the earth by a god.
~~~
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